New York City, by Michael Kenna

Robert Mann Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of new photographs of New York City by Michael Kenna. New York / New Work will be on view from November 29, 2007 through January 26, 2008. An opening reception for the artist will be held on Thursday, November 29 from 6-8pm.

(Photo by Michael Kenna)

There's more photographs of New York City on here on Kenna's webpage. Although I was a bit surprised to hear that Michael Kenna had been working on a New York City project, it turns out that he's been working on this project for the past thirty years! I guess I should have checked up on his site more often.

Unfortunately, as you may have gathered from the announcement, the show ends today. I'm surprised that none of us in the West Coast branch of the Michael Kenna Fan Club heard about this until now. Either way, I bet the photographs will be appearing in a book soon.

Thursday, January 24, 2008

Lost America on ArtLand

I know I'm a little late to the party on this one, but I never felt like I was one to go along with the crowd.

Troy Paiva, owner of the popular Lost America brand name, is featured in a recent ArtLand video interview, which is now available on YouTube. Troy talks about his night photography and his thoughts about abandoned buildings.

March 1943. Another night shot by Jack Delano, taken on his Santa Fe rail trip west from Chicago in 1943. His description of this scene: "Activity in the Santa Fe R.R. yard, Los Angeles. Due to blackout regulations, floodlights, switch lights, locomotive headlights and lights on the bridge in background have been shaded to cast light downward. Broad streaks of light are caused by paths of locomotive headlights, thin wavy lines by lamps of switchmen working in the yard."

Jack Delano was one of the photographers for the Farm Security Administration until its dissolution in 1943. I recently learned that he was also a composer, as well as a photographer. If you browse through the FSA's archives, you'll see that there are quite a few night photographs in their collection. Marion Post Wolcott, for example, also shot a fair number of night photographs in the 1930's and 40's.Shorpy is blog of photographs that depict life approximately 100 years ago. It includes many photographs from the Farm Security Administration. The blog posts approximately one vintage photograph per day, and sometimes more. It's a great way to catch up on your photo history without cracking open a book.

As one of the few night photographers in Poland, Pawel hopes to get more Polish photographers interested in night photography, and begin organizing regular meetings in Poland. Pawel's regular posts may slow down for a short while because he's busy with the recent birth of his first child. But I look forward to seeing more updates in the future.

If English isn't your favorite language*, you can also see Pawel's main site here.

Sunday, January 06, 2008

James Gallimore

James Gallimore is a night photographer based in Manchester, UK. I recently came across one of his stunning shots on Flickr which featured a self-portrait taken by attaching his camera (and, quite a nice one) to the hood ("bonnet") of his car while he drove around town.

(Photo by James Gallimore)

Obviously, this is a long exposure that was taken while James was driving around at night. For this particular series of photographs, James attached his camera to the car with a mount made by Arri. The name Arri might not be familiar to many still photographers, but they have been a huge manufacturer of motion picture film equipment since the beginning of the 20th century. In fact, the ArriFlex is to the motion picture industry, as the name Leica is to still photography.

But, back to James... It may sound crazy to trust your camera to a bunch of suction cups, but this technique is common with very expensive video and movie film cameras. You can see more of James' work on his personal website, as well as his Flickr! homepage.

Also, don't confuse James' website ("nightphographer.co.uk") with Canadian photographer Larrie Thomson's website ("nightphotographer.com"). They're two different people, on different sides of the Atlantic Ocean.

Thanks to everyone who entered. I received a surprising number of entries from South America (at least one-third of the total number of entries). I didn't realize that I had any readers from down there. But I'm thrilled to hear to hear about that. I was also surprised that many of the responders did not have any of their photographs available on the web. Remember everyone, you can get a basic Flickr account for free. So most photographers should have very little excuse not to start uploading, sharing and connecting with other night photographers.

This was an interesting way to connect with some night photographers who had never contacted me before, nor left any comments on this blog. Since I have plenty of other books to give away, I'll definitely have another raffle, or two, in the future.